Toyota trebles Q2 profit, raises full year forecast

Toyota’s Porte is displayed at its headquarters in Tokyo on Monday. Toyota and its group companies sold a total of 7.4 million vehicles worldwide in January-September, beating GM and Volkswagen to be the top selling carmaker. Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

Tokyo:Toyota Motor Corp. raised its full-year net profit forecast to $9.7 billion even after its sales in China, the world’s biggest auto market, were battered by a popular backlash against Japan over a territorial dispute.

Sales at Toyota and its two Chinese joint ventures almost halved in September and October. Honda Motor Co. Ltd’s China car sales more than halved last month, while Nissan Motor Co. Ltd’s fell 41%.

While Honda last week cut its full-year net profit forecast by one-fifth to take account of the China damage, and Nissan is expected to follow suit when it releases its September results on Tuesday, Toyota has found room to revise its forecasts higher as it traditionally gives more conservative earnings guidance and relies less heavily on China sales.

China, the world’s biggest autos market, accounts for around 12% of Toyota’s revenue, some way below Nissan’s 27% and Honda’s 20%. The anti-Japan backlash in China over disputed islets in the East China Sea allowed Hyundai Motor and BMW to pick up market share.

Toyota increased its net profit forecast for the year to end-March to ¥780 billion, up 2.6% from its previous guidance. It said full-year operating profit would be ¥1.05 trillion, up a touch from its earlier forecast for ¥1 trillion.

The September quarter net profit more than trebled to ¥257.9 billion ($3.2 billion) on solid sales in North America and Southeast Asia, beating an average estimate of ¥228.8 billion from six analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. A year ago, Japanese manufacturers were still reeling from the March earthquake and tsunami.

Big in America

In its biggest market, the US, Toyota’s sales rose 16% in October from a year ago, giving it and its Lexus luxury brand a 13.9% market share, up from 12.3%.

The Camry was the third-best selling vehicle in the US in October after Ford’s F-Series pick-up truck and GM’s Chevy Silverado, and led the mid-sized family sedan category ahead of Honda’s Accord and Nissan’s Altima.

Toyota and its group companies sold a total of 7.4 million vehicles worldwide in January-September, beating GM and Volkswagen to be the top selling carmaker. Toyota was the world’s biggest automaker from 2008 through 2010, and looks set this year to regain top slot after recovering from a series of crises—from the global financial meltdown and damaging recalls to natural disasters and the China row.

Toyota on Monday trimmed its forecast for global full-year production—excluding most of its China business—to 8.75 million vehicles from a previous 8.8 million.

Shares in Toyota, valued at nearly $135 billion—almost as much as Honda, Nissan and Hyundai combined—are up by a quarter this year, easily outpacing Honda’s 4.5% gain, while Nissan is flat. Ahead of Monday’s results, Toyota rose 2.2% to their highest close in six weeks.

Time to change

Toyota, which blazed a trail for mass producing quality cars, but then tripped up by expanding too fast into the US muscular SUV and truck market at a time when the yen, too, was rising, has been on a relentless cost-paring binge. Investors now want to see real signs that Toyota is fixing its core problem. As the company’s president Akio Toyoda puts it: having to make “ever-better cars”.

While Toyota is again making money, profitability in its core car business is much lower than its financial services unit, which brings in just 5% of revenue, but a quarter of operating profit.

“We are changing a lot from what we were. We want to prove how we have changed through our products, and we want to ask everyone to wait a little bit more,” vice president Mitsuhisa Kato said in August.

“It’s tough for Toyota to dominate the market again with its current product line-up. It needs to improve overall product attractiveness, including design and ride quality,” said Masatoshi Nishimoto, autos analyst at IHS Automotive in Tokyo.

More aggressive

One sign of change is Toyota’s more controversial designs tested on recent models. For example: the “spindle grille” on some luxury Lexus models—a prominent grille pinched in the middle—gives the car a bolder, more aggressive look.

“We are starting to think about how we can produce cars that stand out, rather than cars that are accepted by everyone but have no unique identity,” said Toyota designer Ryo Ikeda.

Another is the Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA), a new framework to build better cars and cut costs by developing multiple models simultaneously to use more common parts. Shared parts mean suppliers can produce a larger number of fewer parts, cutting the unit price. The framework focuses on three platforms, each carrying 8-10 models, Toyota employees said.

The first car to be fully developed by the TNGA will be the revamped Prius for late-2014 release, followed by the subcompact Vitz and the next generation Camry around 2016, analysts said.

As the global market evolves, Toyota is looking to strengthen its foothold in emerging markets, and plans to double its China sales to 1.8 million cars by 2015. It has positioned Southeast Asia as a “second mother-base” after Japan.